dual boot, java

[Matthew Seaman]

On Fri, Jun 27, 2003 at 12:35:40PM +0200, Olivier DAVY wrote:

> However, I cannot delete my Linux for FreeBSD on my dual boot Pc 
> (Win...ws + Linux) since I do not know the following things, t hat are 
> essential for me to well manage my PC :
> 1. when installing FreeBSD on a partition on the same disk as Windows, 
> what kind of boot manager should I use.

You can use the FreeBSD boot manager -- it's minimalistic (you WinXP
partition will show up labelled as '???'), but it generally works.  If
you want something with a few more options and settings to play with,
try Grub, which is in ports.

Note that Grub doesn't yet recognise the ufs2 filesystem available in
5.x -- there are some easy workarounds that you can find by searching
in the mailing list archives.

> During the install, the boot manager choosing screen suggest to install 
> nothing. But how to boot on BSD ?
> So I tried to install BSD with Linux and Windows, and use Lilo to boot 
> BSD. Well, it works, but I am not satisfied, since Linux is still 
> necessary to boot. What option should I choose ? How should I partition 
> my disk to have this dual boot.

Using Lilo without linux is probably not the best choice -- if you
modify anything that entails reconfiguring lilo, I believe you'll need
a bootable Linux partition to do that.

> What kind of bootmanager should I use ? Does Windows XP (or 2000) could 
> boot FreeBSD (hum ?) ?

Indeed, the WinXP boot manager is reputedly capable of booting FreeBSD:

    http://bsdvault.net/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=88

> 2. On my standalone disk (cf. (*1)), I use the default bootloader of 
> FreeBSD.
> But I can not delete if from my HD, whereas I can delete lilo by 
> executing fdisk /MBR ? So what is the issue ? Is the BSD boot loader not 
> in the Master Boot Record ? How can i delete it, to delete all FreeBSD 
> from my disk (just in case...) ?

Running 'fdisk /MBR' from DOS, or equivalently running:

    # fdisk -i -B -b /boot/mbr

from within FreeBSD, will over-write the FreeBSD bootloader with a
default master boot record and wipe out any custom bootloaders.

> 3. Why there is only 2 CD-ROM for the 5.1 whereas there is 4 for the 4.X ?

If you buy FreeBSD CD Roms from on of the resellers, you'll get 4 CDs
as per usual.  The 3rd and 4th CD Roms simply contain pre-built
packages which are all available by FTP already.

> 4. Is Java now well supported (I tried once to install it, but it did 
> not work since I did not found the right version of the JDK to port). I 
> 'd like to install a true J2EE plateform on BSD !

The java/jdk14 and java/jdk13 ports are both running excellently for
me.  Note that these give you J2SE, not J2EE, but that makes very
little difference for almost all applications.

Installing the native jdk ports involves a great deal more palaver
than it really should.  Sun's licensing requirements mean that you can
just go and grab the sources from a website or ftp server in the usual
way.  So you have to go to Sun's website and register and click on
buttons that say that you agree to their terms.  Then in order to
compile the native java for the first time, you need to have a
pre-compiled version of java at pretty much the same release level.
That means that you'll need to temporarily install eg. the
linux-sun-jdk14 port in order to compile the native jdk14 port.  Once
you've got a native jdk14 port, you can pkg_delete linux-sun-jdk14 and
any other now redundant dependency required to install the port.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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